Providence College’s Linda Ernst (in red jacket) speaks with job coach Susan Kennedy. To Kennedy’s left is Amy Donegan, associate director of the Boston College Career Center. Photograph: Lee Pellegrini

A survey taken in May by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that less than a fifth of graduating seniors who had applied for a job had one in hand. By comparison, in the pre-recession year of 2007 more than half of the seniors completed their job search by commencement.

These daunting statistics and a driving rain supplied the backdrop for a conference held June 24 in the former cardinal’s residence on Brighton Campus. Theresa Harrigan, director of the Boston College Career Center, organized the so-called Career Summit to discuss ways of helping undergraduates and alumni navigate the current economic turbulence. The daylong event drew 80 career counselors from 35 colleges and universities around New England and addressed topics such as “How to Deliver Discouraging News From a Student Formation Perspective,” “Teaching Students How to Present International Experiences to Employers,” and “Being da Vinci—Helping Our Alumni Sculpt New Identities for a Changing World.”

In an opening keynote address, labor-market economist Paul Harrington of Northeastern University pointed out that college graduates are faring well compared with those without college degrees, whose jobless rates are in double digits, twice that of their degreed counterparts. However, he said, younger college graduates “don’t like to be unemployed. They tend to trade unemployment for underemployment,” quickly settling for lower-paying jobs. He cited a study of recent New England graduates showing that barely six in 10 hold jobs normally filled by people with degrees.

Harrington predicted that the current period of “excess labor supply” will drag on for another decade or longer. “I know it’s really tough news. But that’s the reality you’ll be facing in the coming years.”

This forecast offered little encouragement, but as Sheila Curran, a former Brown University counselor who runs a Providence, Rhode Island, counseling firm, commented, “Now is not the time to throw up your hands.” The task was to share ideas about getting students and alumni through the recession with their goals intact.

In a session titled “Creative Job Search Marketing for a Challenging Labor Market,” job coach Susan Kennedy argued that graduates shouldn’t lunge for the first job they are offered. “If you do that, five years later you’ll wake up to find that you’ve missed the ship—you didn’t get the skills needed for your dream job,” said Kennedy, cofounder of Career Treking, a firm that assists young professionals.

After her presentation, in an interview, Kennedy recounted the story of a recent graduate who aspired to, but couldn’t secure, a position in brand management or marketing with a major multinational apparel company. Instead of settling for a random full-time job, he chose to take a part-time marketing position with a company that promotes international golf tournaments.

Kennedy pointed to research suggesting that students in past recessions who formulated backup plans of this sort were less likely to see their earnings stagnate for years following the recession (a lag documented most recently in a study by Yale School of Management economist Lisa Kahn). Kennedy’s advice to young professionals (and older ones, too): “Develop the skills for your dream job. When the market rebounds, you’re ready.”

Andrea Dine of the Hiatt Career Center at Brandeis University said, in a session on delivering discouraging news, that while being honest with students is important, so is helping them discern the motivations for their chosen career path and channeling those aspirations into viable alternatives. If an interest in financial analysis and problem solving underlies a student’s desire to work in investment banking (where there are virtually no entry-level jobs at the moment, according to Dine), she might suggest looking at the field of wealth management or at the federal regulatory agencies that are expanding their operations in response to the economic crisis.

Hiding out in graduate school during a recession is not an option Dine likes. “I die when students come to me and say ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, so I’ll go to graduate school,’” she said, and there seemed to be a consensus among the attendees that graduate study is a good career option only when your field of interest calls for it.

Other speakers and audience members offered a variety of ideas. Kelly Alice Robinson, a resource manager with the Boston College Career Center, recommended that students “build their brands,” or professional identities, online through social media such as LinkedIn. Trisha Griffin-Carty, a Boston-area communications consultant, highlighted the importance of effective storytelling in the part of a job interview where applicants are asked to tell about themselves (add “color and dimension and weight” to stories, with details, she instructed). A number of attendees mentioned the value of internships, among them Candice Serafino, from Emmanuel College, who said that of the seniors at her school who graduated with jobs in hand, 27 percent were headed back to companies and organizations where they had been student interns.

According to Theresa Harrigan, Boston College’s most recent graduates are struggling to find work. Professional entry-level jobs are scarce in most sectors, with two exceptions, she says—environmental work and government agencies. “Students are getting job offers, but this year, we’re not getting [them] before graduation.” Harrigan notes that on-campus job interviews declined by around 20 percent this past academic year. In addition, “we’re seeing a number of young alumni who have been laid off,” she says, referring to 2007 and 2008 graduates in particular.

As graduates continue to search for a first job, or return after losing that first job, the relationship between alumni and counselors at the Career Center is expanding. Harrigan and her associates encourage recent (and not so recent) graduates to stay in touch. The career office held a senior-week cookout outside Robsham Theater on May 13, she says, “just to say, ‘We’re here if you need us. We’ll be open during the summer. Come right in.’”

Read more by William Bole